Recently, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8, which boasted much better standards compliance than previous iterations of the browser. While it passed the Acid2 test, IE8 failed miserably in the Acid3 test, and many people criticised Microsoft for it. Microsoft Australia's Nick Hodge has stated that Microsoft purposefully decided not to support Acid3, because the test tests against draft standards.

Microsoft has never shied away from "adopting" and "extending" draft and/or unofficial specifications. If this story were true, it would mean Microsoft had completely up-ended 15 years of worst practice; unlikely. What is far more likely is this: they couldn't get it to work, while at the same time: 1. maintaining what little vendor lock-in they still get due to the ignorance of the management class, and 2. not shoot their Silverlight baby in the head by providing a viable Ajax-based platform.

Microsoft is deathly afraid of Ajax; Ajax makes pretty much everything they have to offer irrelevant. So they are trying to kill it by pushing a Javascript-disabled "browser". No surprise there.

Microsoft has never shied away from "adopting" and "extending" draft and/or unofficial specifications. If this story were true, it would mean Microsoft had completely up-ended 15 years of worst practice; unlikely. What is far more likely is this: they couldn't get it to work, while at the same time: 1. maintaining what little vendor lock-in they still get due to the ignorance of the management class, and 2. not shoot their Silverlight baby in the head by providing a viable Ajax-based platform.

Microsoft is deathly afraid of Ajax; Ajax makes pretty much everything they have to offer irrelevant. So they are trying to kill it by pushing a Javascript-disabled "browser". No surprise there.

Or more correctly a browser that does 'javascript good enough' - its even more pathetic seeing the number of pathetic losers in large software companies who INSIST on using ActiveX/IE only features instead of AJAX.

I wonder instead of the EU going after Microsoft they went after these vendors instead who refuse to write software that is multiplatform and not tied to a particular piece of proprietary technology.

Microsoft Outlook Web Access was a very early AJAX application that is widely used. I've copied a quotation from Shreesh Dubey in Code Magazine that provides further insight into javascript performance http://tinyurl.com/ctcs32.

'...We worked closely with the Google Gmail product team and focused on making engineering fixes that directly resulted in improved end-user performance. As a result of these efforts, we were able to directly impact commonly used Gmail operations between 15% - 25% compared to Internet Explorer 7. We believe Gmail is quite representative of the current generation of AJAX applications in how they exercise the AJAX subsystems, so we think other AJAX applications will see similar improvements...'